No.
Her heart is beating. Basuin looks up, and where he thinks Sa-cha to be, at the mouth of the River, there stands his mother. She looks the same as she always did—threads of silver running through her dark hair, a soft face full of laugh lines and wizened dimples. Age spots litter her face and her hands, but she’s still as beautiful as she always was.
“Ma,” he calls, voice thin. But she only smiles, not saying a word. Then, she reaches into his chest. With one hand, she pulls something dark and pulsating from him. It aches like a wound. In another, she takes something white and shimmering. It burns as it leaves the cavity of his chest.
Two spirits, two gods inside him, both in the palms of her hands the way her godstone used to fit in her fingers. His mother’s lips curl, worn in that knowing look she always had.
And before his eyes, both the wolf-man and the deer-girl come to life. Out of spirits, they morph into bodies, beautiful god-things he’s seen before, when they chose to deify him. A man with the head of a wolf, a girl with the head of a deer.
The wolf-man holds out his arms and the deer-girl rushes forward, jumping into his embrace. Their twinkling laughs fill the cave, loud over the stream of the Winter River as the wolf-man twirls the deer-girl around. Around and around until they form one body, one soul—black and white and white and black.
Lovers. Like Ko said: Always together, until they weren’t anymore. How the wolf-man thumped its tail when Ren touched him, how it howled for her, how it pressed Basuin toward her. They were lovers, the Wolf God and the Forest God. It sinks deep into him somewhere with an ache, watching them reunite with laughter. Tangled in one another, embracing the other until they are so close they make only one body. Basuin closes his eyes. The wolf-man wanted to protect his lover.
It wasn’t the gods who bound them—it was love. The Wolf God chose to be the guardian of the Forest God. Like Basuin chose, in the end, to be Ren’s protector. It was choice.
But then, they separate again in a shower of light that glitters across the cave walls. The wolf-man, standing tall beside the deer-girl, looks at him.
“Thank you, Basuin of Ankor,” he says.
In turn, all Basuin can do is bow his head, tears falling down the planes of his face. There’s an emptiness inside of him, an eviction he didn’t realize he would feel this deeply. The empty space where his heart used to belong, ripped out.
“Basuin,” the wolf-man calls again, and he looks up. The wolf-man’s eyes glow red, and beside him, the deer-girl’s eyes are glowing blue. “Would you continue protecting this forest?”
“Of course,” he answers. “I told her—we’ll rebuild. The army left scars, I know. I’ve left my own share. But I’ll work to heal it. We’ll grow again.” He bites his tongue to hold back a sob from his chest. “I want to do that, for her. For those who I hurt and those who lost their lives.”
In the corner of the cave, Haaman cries into their hands.
After Valkesta, he wanted so badly to die. And when he came here, deified to be a god who was only meant to protect the forest and its god, he wanted nothing more than to die again. But now, he has a job to do. A duty he chooses to take on, not one he’s commanded to. Ren is dead, but he needs to keep the memory of her alive. He has to. The hurt will linger and he will live on, even without her by his side.
And in the time it will take to rebuild, Basuin will learn forgiveness. He’ll do as Ren told him and he’ll learn to forgive himself—even for the death of her. Not today, not tomorrow, and not soon. But one day.
Basuin looks down at her, the softness of her sleeping face. “This is our home. I want to protect what belonged to her. So I’ll stay. I’ll protect the forest.”
The wolf-man laughs that huff of a laugh it always did, then sweeps the deer-girl into his arms. They spin around, happily, until they form into one soul. Together again, they shoot like a star across the sky straight into Basuin’s chest, and he staggers back. It feels familiar again, hot and bright but familiar. He’s full again, the gods nestled in the space in his ribcage.
But Basuin falls to his knees and sobs, clutching his chest. The Wolf God and the Forest God are inside him, both of them. There’s no one left to deify Ren. No one to bring her back. She’s gone—she’s really gone. Basuin sinks, on all fours, coughing out a sob.
Ren’s dead, and he’s left behind.
But over the roaring in his ears and the rush of water, Yaelic gasps. “Captain,” Yaelic calls. “The River.”
It’s enough to make Basuin look up, vision blurry with hot tears. The cave is awash in blue, so brightly blue. Walls painted in all shades and facets of sapphires. Magic floods the River, fluorescent, but then it trickles right back to Ren’s body. She’s absorbed it, encased in it, like a cocoon webbed around her. Breathing in and out as if the magic has become a lifeform.
White lines, tattoos and leylines and scars like a god mark, thread through her body and drip down her limbs. It starts at the crown of her hair and draws down her arms, her stomach, and down her legs to wrap around her ankles. A split in a chrysalis.
Then, Ren’s eyes open. She takes a breath and consumes the magic on her skin, alighting her in something only described as godly.
He’s stunned. But not stunned enough. Basuin rushes to cradle her, pulling her body against his in a crushing grip. He cries into her wet hair, tucks his face into her neck to feel for her pulse. It beats, and it beats, and Ren wraps her arms around him.
“Basuin,” she whispers, clutching him. “It’s all right. I’m here.”
He sobs in her arms like a child would, purely and freely as the grief breaks from him. There’s magic on her skin and he can feel it. Taste it. A buzzing in the air like static that he still isn’t sure is real.
“How?” Bass pulls back enough to look at her, to run his hands over her face and smooth her hair out of her eyes. He needs to know how she lives, needs to understand before she’s ripped from him again. “How are you here? The Forest God—”
“You are the Forest God,” she says, placing her hand on his chest. “You reunited them.” It makes her smile. “They were eternal lovers. Separated in death, when their shrines were destroyed. And you reunited them.” She repeats it with pride.
Basuin almost laughs. He could shake her. Cry again, because this isn’t real. “Ren, how are you alive?” he pleads. If this is a trick, if this will only last a second, it’ll devastate him. He’s already so broken. It won’t take much.
